please accept my apologies for not writing in French but I have a question regarding the 74 gun ship Duguay Trouin. My Name is Peter I am from Germany and I am intending to draw plans of the ship using my AutoCAD Programme. I have the plans from the National Maritime Museum, Boudriot's 74 Gun Ship and also his Bonhomme Richard. So far I understand there were three Frames between each maindeck gunport. The Frames in my plans are two feet thick (649,6 cm). The space between the Frames is 7 inches. In the Stern area the Frames fit nicely between the gunports in the NMM plan.

However, in the bow area they don't fit anymore. There is apparently no distortion in the NMM plan as the scale at the bottom lines up nicely with my CAD scale. In The 74 Gun Ship Jean Boudriot notches the Frames to chisel out the gunports, but in Bonhomme Richard the Frames are arranged to form the sides of the gunports like I did it in my plan. Which is correct?

Le Bonhomme Richard is a civil construction that uses its own rules, those of La Compagnie des Indes whose engineers are not those of the Navy, although some of them also work for the king.Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the 1820s, the position of the ports of the lower battery of the king's ships was not indexed on the distribution of the frames. These are the provisions found in the V74 even if random manufacturers can be found portholes aligned with the frames. It's not common because it is necessary to grant the widths of the frames with the intervals recommended between the ports which is not systematic. On the other hand, the ports of the battery above inevitably cut the frames.I looked at the tables of the size of the woods, for a 74 of that time the frame have 2 x 13 inches or 70 cm.

This leads me to wonder: reconstructing a ship 's framework plan is a very complicated task that requires a great deal of knowledge in naval architecture. Have you these abilities, the vocabulary that will enable you to explore the necessary documentation, experience in this type of construction, great patience and unfailing pugnacity?

It is a copy of the well-known Hohenzollernmodell which was destroyed in WWII. It is built in 1:21 scale and is made entirely of oak.-----------C'est une copie du Hohenzollernmodell bien connu qui a été détruit dans WWII. Il est construit en échelle 1:21 et est entièrement en chêne.

I have now worked out a Frame Elevation that I'm pretty happy with. The Frames are 2x13 inches and the space between them is 108mm. However there are still some questions: The riders do not line up with the Frames. According to Jean Boudriot, however they are not even meant to.

My frames don't even line up with the centreframe in admiralty draught. We can see that the draughtsmen placed the centreframe at a rider amidship at its centreline. I understand that about three or four frames amidship were identical in shape. One of these was the centreframe, most likely the middel-frame of these. Can we say that the centreframe was precisely where it is marked in the admiralty plan? Were the draughtsmen able to find out where it is? Was it important? Did they care? Is the centreframe in the plan simply any given Frame at the widest Point of the hull?

A couple of years ago I started building a frame model of the Implacable. However the plan was drawn by hand and it was not very accurate. I just measured the frames and they are 720mm, so only fractionally too thick. It is in 1/24th scale and made of pear. However pear is incredibly hard and difficult to work with in this scale. Should this attempt, my second attempt, be more successful then I might work with oak instead which is easier to work with. I once worked with cherry which is pure delight to handle, but the colour might look a little odd on a model ship.

Well, I have the same problem with a British draught of Surcouf's Confiance. The Brits didn't care about the French disposition of frames, they just used their own method, which they were used to and comfortable with. So the midship bend on the British plan does most certainly not correspond to the real French frames inside the ship.Thus I would say, you could go forward with your design.